Profile

Founded in 1975, the Brecht Forum is devoted to promoting social change and independent thought. Though the institute is supposedly nonpartisan, its programs and classes—some run by in-house groups like the New York Marxist School and the Institute for Popular Education—unabashedly skew to the far left. (Not surprising given the center's namesake: socialist German playwright Bertolt Brecht.) With a full-time staff of just three, the center relies on over 200 volunteers to teach classes and lead discussion groups. Now housed in its sixth location, an artists' complex near the Hudson River, the organization's 5,500-square-feet of space is divided up into a gallery, two classrooms, and a theater set apart by a semicircular drywall built by local high-school students. The theater's chairs are stacked amid exposed wooden pillars while films are projected onto a white wall, a function-first aesthetic which Brecht himself would've approved heartily. — Joe DeLessio

Though most classes and events have an admission fee, rarely is anyone is turned away because of an inability to pay.

Rare Books
One of Brecht's classrooms contains a small library of Marxist books, some quite rare, by the likes of Lenin and Trotsky.